Form: Short Note

http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/05/23/richard-florida-is-wrong-about-creative-cities/BOOK YOU SHOULD READ: ENRICO MORETTI’S THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF JOBS

I had the privilege of living in Seattle during the rise and crest of Microsoft. Galleries, and playhouses, the experimental “Entros” restaurant, the expansion of the art-glass movement, the rise of seattle as metalsmithing community. The northwest painting movement imitating Z Z Wei. And today the innovation in home design is still heavily influenced by the seattle market. Microsoft gave more of its profits to employees than perhaps any company in history. And Seattle’s unique character reflects it.

There is a difference between the Creative Class and the Innovative Class. Creativity is a luxury good. Innovation is an economic necessity that makes that creativity possible.

The arts are a luxury good produced as a byproduct of wealth. The arts become a draw for the creative class. And the creative class improves the overall environment. But it’s industry, and in particular, industry that produces exports that makes it possible for a city to afford the arts.

Unfortunately there is a meme or perhaps desire, within the creative fields that they are the leaders rather than followers of prosperity. During the ‘oughts’ a series of books were published heralding the new leadership of the ‘creative class’.

And similarly, a meme among the political class, that government creates prosperity. The effect of which can be seen in the failure of large scale urban projects such as those produced by Detroit. Or the hulking travesties of the old industrial northeast. Even in Seattle, the government all but drove Boeing out of the state, in one of the greatest political vanities in history.